He began to buy up the former war planes in a bid to give them a more fitting final resting place.

After Mr Soplata's death in 2010 the aviation graveyard was kept a secret by relatives fearing scrappers.

The haunting images were captured by 24-year-old photographer, Jonny Joo, who has made a name for himself by venturing into long-abandoned places.

Mr Joo, from Ohio, said: 'I was driving around looking for derelict buildings to photograph and I stumbled across a big open space on the map so I decided to check it out.

'There ended up being someone at the property and he gave me a bit of history and let me take photographs.'

'Some of these planes actually bombed places - people could have died in those planes,' said Mr Joo.

'There's so much history throughout the whole entire place - it's a little bit creepy when you think about it.'If a picture could tell a thousand words you could write books and books from these. It's been sitting pretty much abandoned since the seventies.

'It's a really incredible place to see in person.Today's decay is yesterday's memories.'